Monday, September 23, 2013

Mr. Porter states: "The death toll from firearms in the US suggests that the country is gripped by civil war." Mr. Porter introduces this statistic: "The annual toll from firearms in the US is running at 32,000 deaths and climbing..."

For starters, Mr. Porter, I can assure you that if civil war was going
on in this country, the body count would be a LOT higher than the number
upon which you base your premise. In fact, during our last Civil War
(more correctly known as The War Between the States also referred to in the South as The War of Northern Aggression) we lost approximately 52,000 during three days in July, 1863 that involved the Battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg.

The media betrayed a willingness to indulge in misleading and
outdated cultural stereotypes when it comes to the South. Taylor
Colwell reports for Townhall Magazine.

The South has always occupied a special place in the American
landscape. As early as the Colonial era, a Southern tradition developed
alongside but separate from the rest of the country, handing down a
distinctive body of values, customs and stories that has shaped its
culture for centuries.

In recent months, several news stories have called attention to the
national media’s treatment of the South. Media portrayals of the Paula
Deen saga, the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act decision, and other
relevant stories betray a willingness to indulge in misleading and
outdated cultural stereotyping.

Following a blitzkrieg from outlets like MSNBC, CNN, Huffington Post
and more, jovial Georgian chef Paula Deen was dropped by multiple
corporate partners—Food Network, Smithfield, Wal-Mart, Target, Home
Depot, Sears and several others. Deen’s crime: she admitted in a court
deposition to using the N-word in a decades-old conversation with her
husband. The conversation took place immediately after a black man
placed a gun to her temple and robbed her. She said in the deposition,
“… that’s just not a word that we use as time has gone on” and
apologized on several occasions, but to no avail; corporate America,
egged on by the media onslaught, snatched away her livelihood.

At the same time Deen was being excoriated for her private use of
bigoted language many years prior, two other public figures escaped
media scrutiny for hateful public comments they made in the present.

Alec Baldwin, the actor well known for his outspoken liberal
activism, took to Twitter with virulently homophobic comments aimed at a
reporter who had criticized Baldwin’s wife, writing “[I’d] put my foot
up your f---ing a--, George Stark, but I’m sure you’d dig it too much,”
and “I’m gonna find you George Stark, you toxic little queen, and I’m
gonna f--k you…up.” Baldwin later disabled the Twitter account and
apologized, but the incident failed to trigger much media attention, and
he remains front and center in Capital One commercials.

Meanwhile, Michael Eric Dyson, a Georgetown University professor and
regular MSNBC contributor, said of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
on the network’s show “Martin Bashir,” “A symbolic Jew has invited a
metaphoric Hitler to commit holocaust and genocide upon his own people.”
Far from begetting disciplinary action or even public statements of
disapproval from the network or the university where he teaches, Dyson’s
remarks earned him a spot on the following Sunday’s “Meet the Press”
and appearances on subsequent MSNBC programs.

There certainly appears to be a double standard when it comes to bigoted comments from well-known people.

Vandals set fire to a life-sized bronze statue of President Ronald
Reagan at a namesake sports park in California, blackening its colorful
paint and damaging a memorial set up around it.

"It’s an insult to the president as well as to the community," Perry
Peters, founder of the nonprofit Friends of Ronald Reagan Sports Park in
Temecula, Calif., told the local newspaper, The Press-Enterprise.

Peters' organization donated the statue, which was dedicated last year,
and has set up a Paypal account to collect money to restore the
monument, according to the park's website.

One of the biggest mistakes President Barack Obama is making in the
current debate over the threat of a government shutdown and the failure
to raise the debt ceiling is his repeated and stubborn refusal to negotiate.

In speech after speech, Obama crusades against negotiation.

Has anyone ever seen anything like this? He’s the president. Supposedly,
he’s the chief executive. But Obama doesn’t want to dirty his hands by
talking to Republican congressional leaders.

Now, this is an odd paradigm given the fact that the president and his
lieutenants are willing to negotiate with Russia’s Vladimir Putin,
Syria’s Bashar Assad, and most recently Iranian president Rouhani
Hassan.

Lerner's retirement "does not alter the Oversight Committee's interest
in understanding why applicants for tax exempt status were targeted and
inappropriately treated because of their political beliefs," Issa said.

"Her departure does not answer these questions or diminish the Committee's interest in hearing her testimony," he added.

***********************

Lois Lerner, the Internal Revenue Service official at the center of
the tea party targeting scandal, has retired, the agency confirmed
Monday.
The IRS said in a statement that due to privacy reasons, it could not say any more about Lerner's announcement to retire.

Lerner oversaw the IRS division that reviews and approves applications
for tax-exempt status when the IRS reportedly was putting conservative
and tea party groups seeking non-profit status through a more stringent
and strenuous process than other groups.

Two years ago, Gayne C. Young, a Texas-based writer and blogger for Outdoor Life,
scored the interview of a lifetime. As a beat writer, Young had enjoyed
the outdoor exploits of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been
documented shooting a gray whale with a crossbow, tranquilizing a tiger
attacking a news crew, hunting shirtless, fishing shirtless, and riding
horseback shirtless. On a personal level, Young liked the rugged brand
of masculinity that seemed a throwback to Teddy Roosevelt. "Although you
have Clinton shooting ducks, you never see it. Although Rick Perry says
he enjoys hunting, you don't see it. They say they do, but they don't.
Obama says he shoots skeet, but they only released one picture," Young
says. "Here's a guy out there fishing, with no qualms. He's like, 'You
don't like it? Tough.' Then he'd escalate and do more."

His posts on Putin brought in great traffic, so his editor kept encouraging him to
escalate. Soon, Young was declaring his "man crush" on the Russian
president. ("I hate to use that word, especially on a hunting website,"
he admits.) He called the Russian consulate, flirted with the right
secretary, and went through "hoop after hoop after hoop" until, one
Friday, a press attaché called and told him the president wanted his
questions in the next 20 minutes.

Young scrambled and sent something over.
Six weeks later, Putin replied with an almost unbelievable 8,000-word
missive—covering everything from tiger conservation to his favorite
works of Hemingway to the innate frailty of human life. He lectured on
the similarities between Russians and Americans, and demurred from
answering Young's friendliest questions. ("Are you the coolest man in
politics?") "People really liked him, at least on our comments section
on Outdoor Life," Young says.

"Given the demographics of the
readership, most are die-hard Republicans," and when they saw Putin
hunting, he says, "they were like, 'Obama wouldn't do that.' "

Several years ago I wrote
a series of articles entitled “The Hanging of Mary Surratt.” Those
articles were published in the North Carolina Tribune Papers and South
Carolina’s Times-Examiner and
held considerable reader attention for months. They were later incorporated into
my book, The Un-Civil War: Shattering the
Historical Myths, published by Universal Media in
2011.

Mary Surratt was
an attractive, dark-haired widow and boarding house proprietor, who was one of
four alleged conspirators in the Lincoln assassination hanged on July 7, 1865.
At forty-two, she was the first woman ever to be executed by the United States
government.

No nation can
long endure without a strong sense of patriotism, and Americans, like most of
the more prominent peoples of mankind, have a strong tendency to whitewash
history in order to protect the purity of their national narrative. It is more
pleasant to remember and teach an unblemished historical narrative of national
virtue. The blemishes of such national narratives tend to be swept under the
rug, and lifting up the edges of that rug to inspect the blemishes is not always
welcome. The defenders of an unblemished national narrative often react harshly
and go to great lengths of academic and political cover-up to defend strongly
entrenched but fallacious interpretations of history. Such is the case
with the trial and execution of Marry Surratt.

The hanging of
Mary Surratt was not a triumph of justice. It was a disgraceful political and
judicial atrocity that still stains the national conscience and mars the
American ideal of justice. There are still many who feel compelled to defend her
hanging lest we have to look directly into unwelcome truth. But genuine
patriotism is undermined when truth becomes subservient to propaganda and
political ambitions. Truth and genuine love of country are inseparable.
Patriotism without truth is a monstrous imposter.

The Lincoln
assassination conspiracy trial was marked by judicial despotism, suborned
perjury, bribery, and the intimidation and torture of witnesses and defendants.
The investigation, prosecution, trial, and sentences were all managed by the
U.S. War Department under its politically ambitious and ruthless Secretary,
Edwin Stanton, aided by his Chief of Detectives, Col. Lafayette
Baker.

Stanton is often
portrayed as one of Lincoln’s “team of rivals” who ultimately became his most
supportive, loyal, and sympathetic cabinet member. Stanton often did seem to
work well with Lincoln as part of a “good cop-bad cop” team in making stressful
political and military decisions. Stanton often played the “bad cop” who allowed
the President to maintain a more kindly public face in often-harsh dealings with
Northern Democrat opposition and what became a total war policy against Southern
civilians. The reality was that Lincoln was more kindly in disposition than
Stanton, whose ruthlessness often manifested itself with other cabinet members
and independent actions unknown to the President.

One of the
Lincoln cabinet members I have come to admire was Secretary of the Navy Gideon
Welles, who finally felt compelled to privately convey to Lincoln the ugly truth
of Stanton’s devious and “back-stabbing’ nature. Stanton had well-earned the
“back-stabbing” reputation with other cabinet members and several Union General
officers.

Stanton and the
fifteen or so leading “Radical Republicans” in Congress were anxious to connect
Confederate President Jefferson Davis with John Wilkes Booth’s shooting of
Lincoln at Ford’s Theater in Washington on April 14, 1865. Stanton had
orchestrated an attempted assassination of Davis in February 1864. Davis,
however, publicly and privately decried assassination of political leaders as a
strategy of war. No one who is thoroughly familiar with Davis’s highly ethical
character places any credence on such an accusation. I also believe that
Vice President Andrew Johnson was an unlikely assassination conspirator. He was
very anti-secession but very pro-Constitution. He had a drinking problem, but
had sterling qualities of character, which eventually showed though his faults.
As the former Tennessee Democrat’s passion for the Constitution and renewing
compassion for the Southern people began to show, Stanton and the Radicals began
to hate him and would soon attempt to impeach him.

I also place no
credibility in theories that someone other than John Wilkes Booth fatally
wounded Abraham Lincoln on the evening of April 14, 1865. Booth’s first plan was
to capture Lincoln and hold him ransom in pursuit of the release of Confederate
prisoners of war and possibly a negotiated peace. Booth’s own diary indicated he
did not decide to kill Lincoln until April 13. Stanton withheld that diary and
information from the Military Court.

Lincoln’s plan
for a relatively benign reconstruction of the Southern States after the War was
a concern to Stanton and the Radical Republicans. They were determined to wreak
vengeance and continued economic exploitation on the formerly seceded states.
More importantly, Lincoln’s relatively mild reconstruction plan risked the
return of a Democrat Congressional majority. The Radical Republicans were not
about to hand power back to a Democrat majority.

Readers
should bear in mind that the Republican and Democrat parties were quite
different from their modern descendents. Democrat and “conservative” were
virtual synonyms then. Democrats, North and South, were particularly strong on
preserving limited Constitutional government and States Rights. The
Republicans varied from conservative to radical, but were largely a big
business-big government dominated party. The Radical Republicans were the most
unapologetic and ruthless advocates of using big government to profit big
business and big business funding for successful political campaigns. They
favored harsh and exploitive reconstruction that disenfranchised Confederate
veterans and maintained Republican power in the South through Northern
“carpetbaggers” and newly franchised Republican former
slaves.

Why did Stanton go so far
in breaking all the rules of honest investigations and fair trials to
hang Mary Surratt? Why did he persuade General Grant to reject the
President’s invitation to attend the theater with him on April 14? There are
more peculiar coincidences and unanswered questions.

“This is probably our last best
chance to rid the country of this terrible [anti-gun] health care plan.”
-- GOA Executive Director Larry Pratt and Vice Chairman Tim Macy to
grassroots activists across the country (Aug, 2013)

URGENT: Calls are needed to your Senators immediately (202-224-3121), as a key vote on ObamaCare is expected this week. Please see the ACTION item below.

UPDATE: By a vote of 230-189 on Friday, the House voted to fund the federal government, while denying funding for ObamaCare. See the vote here and thank or “spank” your Representative accordingly. (“Aye” was the pro-gun vote.)

Kudos to you for your hard work and astounding victory!

But also, kudos to House conservatives, who stood up to Obama
and his media minions, and to John Boehner, who to paraphrase Winston
Churchill, did the right thing after all other options were exhausted.

Finally, we should give kudos to Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and
Ted Cruz (R-TX) who spearheaded the whole ObamaCare defunding fight on
Capitol Hill. Their push has resulted in this initial victory in the
House.

Now, the action moves to the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry
Reid will try to reinsert funding for the anti-gun ObamaCare law.

Republican Senators can defeat Reid’s substitute language by
filibustering it, and we believe that this is where the battle lines
will be drawn. If 41 senators vote in favor of prolonging the
filibuster, ObamaCare is dead.

And, frankly, any senator who claims to oppose ObamaCare -- but
then votes against the filibuster (thus allowing Reid to reinsert
funding for the anti-gun health care law) -- is a lying hypocrite.

So the message for now is this: Oppose any attempt to insert
funding for the anti-gun ObamaCare law -- even if it means voting to
filibuster the House-passed CR.

Several polls have shown that we have the voice of the American
people on our side. According to one poll, 73% of the American people
favor repealing ObamaCare, either fully or partially (CNN, March 2012).

So please distribute this alert far and wide and let’s mobilize that 73%!

Remember: ObamaCare will give the federal government the
ability to use (and abuse) our medical data as the pretext for keeping
law-abiding gun owners from possessing firearms -- just as they have
already done to more than 150,000 military veterans. We need to keep
the heat on the Senate!

ACTION: Click here to contact your Senators.
Demand that they oppose any attempt to insert funding for the anti-gun
ObamaCare law -- even if it means voting to filibuster the House-passed
CR. And don’t forget to forward this alert to your friends and family!

While sending an email is okay, It is preferred that you make phone calls to your Senators as the Senate filibuster vote could be occurring over the next couple of days. So please call 202-224-3121.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., went on the warpath
against tea-party Republicans Monday, blasting them as “extreme,”
“fanatics,” “anarchists” and living in a “partisan bubble” just as the
Senate opened its session Monday and prepared to consider the House
government-funding resolution, which strips funding from Obamacare and
its exchanges.

After Obama's election in 2009 a small grocery store/convenience store in Florida changed its name to the Obama Express.
Several other stores across the country did the same thing. One of
those was a location in Baltimore, Maryland. Now, in 2013, the Maryland
outlet is under investigation, accused of illegally trafficking in food
stamps.

On September 17, WBAL reported
that nine retailers in Baltimore County had been arrested for illegally
redeeming food stamps for cash and kicking back a portion to food stamp
recipients. The retailers did not sell them any merchandise or food.

One of those indicted was one Abdullah Aljaradi who allegedly
obtained $2 million in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
cash from Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards.

Up until this week, Starbucks had been neutral when it came to
its gun policy, which meant that the coffee giant respected local laws
regarding firearms. This policy was widely respected among gun-rights
advocates—a Starbucks Appreciation Day has even been organized at stores
throughout the country for the past few years—but it also drew the ire
of anti-gun groups and lawmakers
who have been pressuring Starbucks to change its ways. Although the
coffee chain didn’t reverse its policy toward guns, on Wednesday the CEO
issued a statement essentially saying firearms are unwelcome
(but not banned). Even though this wasn't surprising, it was still a
big disappointment for Second Amendment advocates who felt the coffee
giant was moving closer to the anti-gun side of the contentious debate.

Just as the former Soviet bloc’s highest-ranking defector is being
officially commended by the government of his native land for aiding the
downfall of communism in the region, defenders of the old regime are
threatening to bring him before the International Criminal Court of
Justice in The Hague on crimes against humanity.

As WND reported,
Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, who defected to the U.S. in 1978 after
serving as Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu’s top official, was
praised by the current Romanian government in an Aug. 16 letter and
invited to visit the country as an honored guest. The government wants
him to enlighten a new generation in Romania about the tyranny of the
communist era in response to revisionists attempting to rehabilitate the
Ceausescu regime.

Angered by the official restoration of Pacepa and his revealing new expose of communism’s continuing war against the West, “Disinformation,”
a group of Romanian lawyers and human rights activists are preparing
documentation to be sent to The Hague to prosecute him, according to a
Romanian blog.

An Egyptian court on
Monday ordered the Muslim Brotherhood to be banned and its assets
confiscated in a dramatic escalation of a crackdown by the
military-backed government against supporters of the ousted Islamist
president Mohammed Morsi.

The ruling opens the
door for a wider crackdown on the vast network of the Brotherhood,
which includes social organizations that have been key for building the
group's grassroots support and helping its election victories. The
verdict banned the group itself - including the official association it
registered earlier this year - as well as "any institution branching
out of it or ... receiving financial support from it," according to the
court ruling, made public on Egypt's state official news agency MENA.

LSU running back Jeremy Hill
and another man were formally charged in Baton Rouge on Monday with
misdemeanor simple battery in connection with a late-April scuffle in a
bar parking lot.

Hill and Robert Bayardo, who is not an LSU student, will be arraigned
on Friday, East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar Moore said.

The matter has put Hill's 2013 season in doubt because LSU's leading
rusher last season is already on probation stemming from his January
2012 plea of misdemeanor carnal knowledge of a juvenile.

Hill's probationary status likely will not be reviewed by the court
for possible revocation until the charges have been resolved, Moore
said. State District Judge Bonnie Jackson in Baton Rouge already has
placed more restrictive conditions on Hills' probation since his April
27 arrest, including a 9 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew and a ban from bars.

LSU coach Les Miles has suspended Hill pending the outcome of the
case. On Monday, LSU spokesman Michael Bonnette said he did not expect
Miles or the university to have any further comment.

If Republicans don’t blink and block cloture on everything until
Senate Majority Leader Reid promises that the rules will be followed and
Reid will need 60 votes to shut down debate on his amendment to fully
fund ObamaCare, our guys can win this.

If squishy Senate Republicans make arguments that they are voting to
defund ObamaCare when they are voting with Democrats to help Reid defund
ObamaCare, we will lose.

Tea Party minded voter are not stupid. The American people will not
be fooled. Any Senate Republican who votes to shut off debate on this
Continuing Resolution is helping Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to
fund ObamaCare.

Any Republican who is helping Reid, even if they vote right, are
guilty of political treason. They need to be repealed and replaced.

A young Christian girl beheaded in Syria. The sign of extremism and
fanatics, the long beards, is present in each and everyone of these
subhuman Muslims who killed this small child, in their jihad to Allah –
inspired by the Quran. This is Obama, Britain, France, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, Jordan and Turkey funded and supported handiwork.Don’t put your
support behind any of these people, whether for military action in
Syria, asylum, immigration, another hate preaching mosque. *This is what
is moving into your town, your country, your society, your neighborhood: (*Then they best be prepared. BT)

Remembrance

To die for one’s country is not only an act of bravery, it is THE act of bravery. For soldiers, it is just an extension of their military career, a part of their duty. As leaders have asked their soldiers to sacrifice themselves for the good of the society, it is only right for leaders to go through the same motion. They should practice what they have preached.

As war is seen as a noble act, tu sat serves as redemption in case of defeat. It is also a way to tell the enemy: “You might have won the battle/war but you don’t deserve to win because you don’t have the chinh nghia (just cause).” And it is not only just cause: it is the moral belief that the cause they are fighting for deserves their total sacrifice. Continues below

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Core Creek Militia

==============================My sixth great grandfather, his wife, and five of his six children were killed in battle with the Tuscarora Indians at Core Creek, NC.

The Seven Blackbirds

==============================My third great grandfather was an Ensign in the Revolutionary War, and saved his unit's flag after being wounded at the Battle of Brandywine. He was also at Kingston (Kinston), Wilmington, Charleston, Two Sisters and Augusta. He was at the defeat at Brier Creek and also Bee Creek.

Requiem Aeternam -
Eternal Rest Grant unto Them
==============================
My second great grandfather was killed in action on May 3, 1863 at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
=============================
My great grandfather and great uncle knew all the men in the "Civil War Requiem" video as they were part of the 53rd NC which was the sole unit defending Fort Mahone. (Fort Mahone was named "Fort Damnation" by the Yankees) *Handpicked men of the 53rd (My great grandfather was one of these) made the final, night assault at Petersburg in an attempt to break Grant's line. This was against Fort Stedman which was a few miles to the slight northeast. They initially succeeded, but reinforcements drove them back. This video is made from photographs which were taken the day after the 53rd evacuated the lines the night before to begin the retreat to Appomattox. I have many more pictures taken by the same photographer, one of these shows a 14 year old boy and the other is the famous picture of the blond, handsome soldier with his musket.
===========================
*General Gordon promised the men a gold medal and 30 days leave if they accomplished their task and many years after the War my great grandfather wrote General Gordon, who was then governor of Georgia about this incident. They exchanged several letters which I have framed. See first link below.
===========================
*The Attack On Fort Stedman
============================
"His Colored Friends"
============================
Lee's Surrender
=============================
My Black NC Kinfolks
============================
Punished For Being Caught!

Great Grandfather Koonce

He was a drummer boy in the WBTS, survived the War only to die a few years later. He was caught in an ice storm on his way home, but instead of seeking shelter, continued on his horse until the end. His clothes had to be cut off and he died a few days later.